Peter Alsop: Everybody Hurts
by Peter S. Scholtes
Folk singer Peter Alsop has made 17 albums for parents and children, each with songs that are not always geared toward both. He’s a human services educator whose whimsical tunes are often ideal for getting across otherwise tough-to-impress ideas. For parents, this can mean a reminder that fatherly love need not be hard (“holding tenderness inside is only throwing it away”), questioning gender roles (“Let’s all be abnormal and act like ourselves”), and inviting empathy for youthful irrationality (“Logical, logical/Why do you have to be so logical?/Never mind, don’t tell me why/You’ll have a logical reply!”)
For children, Alsop writes as entertainingly about dealing with feelings of loss, fear, boredom, outrage, inadequacy, and separation (“Goodbye, Mom, I love you/But now I’ve got some other things to do”). His most recent album, 2002’s Uh-Oh!, was released like most of his recordings since 1983 on his own Moose School label and features a typically hilarious title track about that childhood commonplace?messes?and what children can teach adults about them. Speaking over the phone from his home in Topanga, California, Alsop says music is the perfect conversation starter.
You have a unique body of work in that you have great songs about gender, usually for adults, and great songs for kids. Do you have any songs about gender for kids?
Well, a song like “It’s Only a Wee-Wee, So What’s the Big Deal?” that’s a song that seems like a kid’s song, but it’s not, really. Because if I go into an elementary school where they hire me to do something, and sing that song, the kids will go home and say, “Mom, we sang about a wee-wee today,” and then the principal gets a bunch of letters.
I play the song for grownups. Little kids five and under don’t really give a crap about gender.
But isn’t that also the age where children begin to assert themselves about being a boy or a girl?
When you’re a little boy, it’s really important to a lot of the adults [that you’re a boy]. Kids pay attention. But it’s not as big a deal to them as it is to grownups. Girls are given a little more latitude to feel and express things than boys are. When gay boys are called sissies, it’s nothing but a pejorative about being a woman—you’re somebody’s “sister.” Because you’re showing your feelings.
Something I think is important is expressed in a song like “My Body,” which goes “My body is nobody’s body but mine.” It’s about setting boundaries and being able to say no, whether you’re a boy or a girl.
Why did you start tackling serious issues in songs?
Well, the Vietnam War required taking a look at how we are in the world. And I was thinking, “This is no different than a family where the big guys are pushing the little guys around.” My first album about this was Asleep at the Helm, which was really a feminist album.
Are there socially conscious ideas bubbling up in something silly, like your song “I Am a Pizza”?
Well, that’s a good example. I asked my kids if they wanted to go get pizza, and my son Matthew said, “Have you heard? I am a pizza!” And I said, “Hey, your first song!” All the other songs have some kind of social relevance. But “I Am a Pizza” is really a push, because it’s just a silly song about being a pizza. It’s one of my biggest songs; a lot of people have covered it.
But the way I use that song, at the end of the song, it goes, “I was a pizza/Now I’m a mess”—it ends up upside down in the box. And afterward, I go, “Okay, raise your hand if you were ever a mess.” Now we’re talking about self-image, all of a sudden. We’re talking about feelings.
